Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Demand for Testing Products, Services on the Rise

The market for testing products and services is booming and could
continue to surge over the next few years, according to industry
analysts and company officials, who say that growth is being fueled by
the shift toward common-core tests across states and the use of new
classroom assessments designed to provide timely and precise feedback
for teachers and students.

Demand for testing resources tends to
be driven by major changes in state or federal policy affecting schools,
and the current environment is reflective of that connection.

Changes
in testing policy with nationwide implications are invariably "good for
any provider of testing materials," said Scott Marion, the associate
director of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment,
a Dover, N.H.-based nonprofit organization that consults with states on
assessments. "You knew the common core was going to be a big change
from what [we] had before."

Mr. Marion also echoed a concern
expressed by others familiar with the testing world: that many companies
are exaggerating their products' alignment to the common core and their
ability to improve achievement.

Still, he predicted that demand
for an array of assessment materials is likely to continue to grow "for
the foreseeable future, as people figure out what [tests] they want."

This new growth in the testing industry bears some similarities to past periods of expansion. The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act
more than a decade ago presaged a wave of spending on assessments and
tools connected to them, as states scrambled to develop high-stakes
tests required by federal law and districts searched for ways to help
students meet academic goals to avoid penalties.

The recent growth
of the testing market does not compare to the wave of activity that
played out then, a number of market insiders said, even though ongoing
plans to create tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards have
led many districts to purchase interim, formative, or other types of
classroom-based assessments.

All but four states have adopted the
common standards in English/language arts, and all but five have adopted
the standards in math.

Formative-Assessment Needs

Gauging
shifts in nationwide demand for testing materials is difficult, but a
number of recent reports have offered a picture of where the market is
now, and where it might be headed.

In an analysis released last year and completed for the Software and Information Industry Association,
a major trade group, consultants John Richards and Leslie Stebbins
surveyed vendors selling products to schools, then extrapolated those
findings to a broader set of companies based on the composition of the
market.

They estimated that the current market for
technology-based testing and assessment products and services in fiscal
2011 was $1.6 billion. Preliminary results that are still being analyzed
show the market grew by at least 20 percent for fiscal 2012, the most
recent year that information was collected from companies, said Mr.
Richards.

He said the findings and what he's heard from
companies-his survey provides those businesses with
confidentiality-suggest to him that the growth will continue.

One
of the biggest factors driving the growth, Mr. Richards said, is
districts' demand for formative-assessment tools, which allow teachers
to measure student learning on the fly and tailor instruction to meet
their needs. Other forms of assessment that are "embedded" in curriculum
and other programs are helping companies, too, he said.

Testing
and assessment providers "are quite happy with how things are going,"
Mr. Richards said. The increase in the testing business is "not just in
one company," he said. "It's pretty broad-based."

Similarly, an analysis released
last year by Outsell, a research and advisory company, estimated the
total yearly size of the U.S. K-12 testing market to be $3.9 billion,
and projected revenues would grow between 4 percent and 5 percent a
year, reaching $4.5 billion by the end of 2014.

The authors say
that forecast "rests largely on a short-term increase in demand for
formative and interim assessment"-often defined as tests taken at
various points during a semester or year, less often than formative
assessments, to help gauge student progress and shape instruction.

By
contrast, revenue from summative assessments-tests designed to measure
what students have learned at the end of a course or an academic year-is
likely to remain flat, Outsell projects, as states move away from
giving individual assessments and band together to create tests aligned
to the common-core standards.

A Spike in Business?

It's
hard to predict the effect the common-core assessments will have on
state spending on testing, a number of testing officials said. One of
the assumptions is that the market for state assessments will shrink as
individual state tests give way to those used by large groups of states
belonging to the PARCC and Smarter Balanced consortia.

But for
now, testing companies are seeing a spike in state-level business
because states are still using their own tests as the consortia work to
get their tests in order. This essentially is creating two markets, said
John Oswald, the vice president and general manager of K-12
student-assessment programs for the Educational Testing Service, the
nonprofit developer of the SAT and other tests and services.

At the state level-where most of the ETS'
work is focused-Mr. Oswald said he did not see evidence of a recent
surge in demand for testing, so much as a continuation of a strong
market since No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2002.

As
the common-core assessments-due for rollout in the 2014-2015 school
year-replace state tests, "there's going to be less business, in
general, for summative assessments," Mr. Oswald said.
The more
pronounced shift in the testing market has come in the demand for
higher-quality assessments, the ETS official said, which include not
only formative and interim assessments but also a variety of other
classroom-based assessments designed to identify student academic
weaknesses and collecting more-exact information about what students
know and don't know.

Shilpi Niyogi, the executive vice president for public affairs for Pearson,
a major publisher and provider of testing and other education services
based in London, agreed with Mr. Oswald's interpretation of the market,
saying districts and schools are choosing "next generation" assessments
that pose deeper questions and churn out more practical information for
educators.

"What we're hearing from customers is that it's not about more or less testing, it's about better testing," Ms. Niyogi said.

She
did not think the overall testing market was particularly robust, but
rather simply in recovery, along with school budgets, emerging from the
depths of the recent recession.

"I don't think the market is booming," she added, "so much as the market is changing."

'More Savvy Market'

District
officials' demands for more-sophisticated tests pose challenges for
testing companies and often require heavy financial commitments, said
Paul Weeks, the vice president for customer engagement for ACT, an Iowa City, Iowa-based testing organization.

Schools
want high-quality tests, but they also want short ones, he said. They
want to go beyond asking students multiple-choice questions, although
doing so costs companies money, and the questions are harder to design,
Mr. Weeks said.

"We're being challenged to meet market needs," he said. "We have a more savvy market."
Other factors are driving districts' interest in improved tests.

Many
states and districts have approved policies tying teachers' and
administrators' evaluations to students' academic progress, as measured
in part by state tests-policies supported by the Obama administration
through its Race to the Top program and the No Child Left Behind waivers
it has granted to states.

But that added measure means educators
do not want to wait until the end of the year to find out if their
students have not grasped a concept. They want that information, which
can be provided by formative and interim assessments, up front so they
can make instructional adjustments.

Overall, testing companies'
biggest market will come not at the state level, but in the nation's
roughly 14,000 school districts, said Mr. Marion of the National Center
for the Improvement of Educational Assessment.

And many vendors
are already flooding districts with products in testing and other areas
that they claim, somewhat dubiously, will boost students' scores on the
common-core tests, Mr. Marion said. Too many of those companies are
promising "quick and easy solutions," he said, without any evidence that
their products will help.

One reason districts crave assessment
to help them gauge student progress is the widespread fear that test
scores will plummet when students stop taking their current state
assessments and move to the common-core exams-which in many states are
expected to set a higher bar for performance, Mr. Marion said.

In
many districts, the message has been that "the kids are doing great," he
said. "The common core will have a bit of shock when the results come
in."

Greg Schultz, the assistant superintendent for student learning in the Bullitt County school district, in Kentucky, sees at least two or three offers a day come in from testing companies and other vendors, arriving via email.

Evaluating Quality

When it comes to purchasing new products for testing and other areas, Mr. Schultz said his credo is "buyer beware."

"Everything
looks really good in a sales presentation," he said. "If you're buying
just to be buying, you might make a huge mistake."

He has
confidence in the strategy his 13,000-student district is using now. For
the past few years, it has used an interim-assessment tool called the
Measures of Academic Progress, developed by the Northwest Evaluation
Association, a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit educational provider.

The
district combines that tool with another program that provides remedial
help to struggling students and builds their skills. The Bullitt County
schools' biggest focus in preparing for the common-core tests has
probably been in professional development, where it has built in more
time for teachers to share effective practices, among other steps.

The
goal of that work is to take the information provided by formative and
other tests, and interpret it to help students. Mr. Schultz likened the
usefulness of tests to that of a thermometer that reveals a fever:
"You're hot, but you've got to figure out why you're hot."

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